If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you know that I’m in Montreal to get some BlackBerrys unlocked. The city is only 2 hours away from BBCool headquarters in Ottawa, so I took the bus to meet some unlocking companies I found online. The first company I went to was run by a guy called Chin and what seemed to be his cousins. The place was located on the 3rd floor of a nondescript building near some strip clubs.
[Side Note: Strip clubs in Montreal offer a great lunch buffet. The meal is all you can eat for $6 and entertainment is on a purely tip basis. Very affordable. At least that's what I've heard.]
Upon entering the company’s office, I was greeted by a girl who didn’t really speak English and who signaled to a playboy with a Bold and Bluetooth set up. His hair was slick and had the demeanor of Chow Yun Fat in Hard Boiled. I gave him a smorgasbord of phones to unlock and he went to work.
For the most part, the unlocks went smoothly. When it came to unlocking the Telus Storms, he told me some wild stories about how it can’t be done. We had a long conversation about Romanians stealing thousands of dollars to crack BlackBerrys and how it would cost me half a million dollars to unlock them.
While we’re talking, a Russian man comes in and asks if they can fix his Nokia’s speaker. After some time of trying to open the phone with a credit card, the screen exploded and the man was told he’ll have to wait at least a week. “Thanks.” Before leaving, a young guy with a large wad of cash handed Chin $1300 and left with a FedEx package.
I thanked Chin for unlocking my phones and went over to a place down the road. He took my Telus Storms and said he’ll have the unlock codes to me shortly. He didn’t know anything about the Romania story.
I’m going to be posting a How To soon where I’ll link to the companies alluded to in this post, I’m just keeping them separate for obvious reasons.
